CABROL, FERNAND

Benedictine abbot, liturgist; b. Marseilles, France, Dec. 11, 1855; d. St. Leonard’s-on-Sea, England, June 4, 1937. He was ordained at Le Mans in 1882 and taught Church history at SOLESMES , where he was prior, 1890 to 1896. In June 1896 he became prior of the newly founded St. Michael’s at Farnborough, England, and from 1903 until his death was abbot, relinquishing actual rule to an abbot coadjutor in 1924. The abbey soon became known as Cabrol, and his fellow monks, especially H. LECLERCQ, continued the liturgical tradition of Solesmes. In 1900–02 Cabrol and Leclercq began the Monumenta ecclesiae liturgica, a collection of texts pertaining to the liturgy from Apostolic times to Constantine. Volumes 2, 3, and 4 are lacking, but M. FÉROTIN of Farnborough published as volumes 5 and 6 the Liber ordinum (1904) and the Liber sacramentorum (1912), texts and studies of the Mozarabic liturgy based on several MSS. In 1903 Cabrol and the monks of Farnborough agreed to undertake the Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (DACL), planning to make generally available exhaustive and definitive studies on archeology to c. 800 and on the liturgy to modern times. In 1913 Leclercq assumed major responsibility, and after his death the work was completed (1953) by H. Marrou. The Monumenta and the DACL have both contributed to the continuous advance of scholarship. Cabrol did a study (1895) of the liturgy in Jerusalem as seen in the Peregrinatio Aetheriae (c. 400). His Livre de la prière antique (1900) has been edited and translated many times. Although his writings are not definitive, they promoted popular interest in the liturgy and its history.